A few months down the road.

It has been just over four months since we said goodbye to our daughter, Simone. Even though I remember everything so clearly, it sometimes feels like some awful warped alternate reality - how could this have really truly happened?

We have good days and very bad ones.  For the most part, we have gotten back to a new sense of normal - one that includes our grief as our daily experience. I cry at some point nearly every day.

It has been helpful that we continue to attend our SAND (Support After Neonatal Death) meetings.  We just attended a meeting after skipping a month, and I could tell that I really needed to be there. There is something to be said about having our kiddos keeping us going through the day to day activities of life. But sometimes it's hard to find the space to truly experience our feelings of grief between trying to make dinner, and homeschool, doing the laundry, and entertaining our kids. It's incredibly helpful to have the space at our meetings to talk about Simone. I always feel a sense of relief after talking and crying and being with others who have also lost their babies.  I am so grateful to my sister who regularly watches Gabriela and Easton so Lane and I can attend these meetings together on a regular basis.

I continue to find that I feel very anxious whenever I am around people who do not know about Simone.  I am constantly worried that they will ask me how many children I have or if I am pregnant and still haven't figured out a comfortable way to answer these questions.  Just Friday a woman asked me if I was pregnant, and it was the first time I was able to say that I had in fact given birth a few months ago to my stillborn daughter. I just feel like I am carrying such a burden, and then, somehow, it becomes my responsibility to ease that burden for other people, to comfort them after they find out my reality. But why should I feel the need to take away others' discomfort, when no one can take away mine?

Last Thursday I went to an appointment to discuss Simone's death, what happened, and how my care would be managed, if I were to have another baby.  It was awful. Thank goodness my friend was able to watch the kids for me, and I was able to go alone.

So there I was, in an unfamiliar place, to speak with an unfamiliar doctor about the death of my newborn baby. And that was the start of my anxiety that morning. There I was holding my hospital discharge papers, looking at terms like "fetal demise", surrounded by pregnant ladies, newborn babies, and pictures of babies and pregnant ladies everywhere I looked.

I had to focus on a picture of Easton to concentrate on something different and take deep, deep breaths in an effort to calm myself down.  My anxiety skyrocketed when they called my name for my appointment and the first thing they did was take my blood pressure.  I have never had blood pressure problems in my life, but that day it was through the roof, crazy high.  The nurse asked if I was okay, which was when I promptly lost it.  I answered her no and sobbed while she took my weight. 

No one at this office knew my history, so they immediately sent a counselor to the room to talk to me. She thought I was in crisis. She came in holding the postpartum depression screening questionnaire I had to fill out.  But with questions like "How often do you cry?" my responses were a giant red flag.  Through my tears I had to assure them that I didn't feel like hurting myself or others.  I think my emotions are perfectly normal and expected for someone whose baby just died. I mean, here I was surrounded by pregnant ladies and babies in a room with an ultrasound machine. The last time I saw one of those was when the hospital staff confirmed that Simone's heart was no longer beating. What do they expect??

So that was an experience I don't care to repeat.

The more time that passes, the more I understand the medical reason for Simone's death. Her cord was attached to the placenta at the very edge, which meant that it was traveling along the edge of the amniotic sac, rather than firmly attached to the middle of the placenta and coming down into the sac, completely away from the edges.  When my water broke, it just happened to burst the amniotic sac right where her cord was traveling, which was why I lost so much blood. That was all her blood that she needed to survive.  There is no indication that because Simone had a velamentous cord insertion, another baby would be likely to have the same condition. But it's certainly terrifying to think about.

They say that it can be checked for in ultrasounds.  In fact, the doctor went back to my ultrasound report and saw that the technician had indicated that I had a normal cord insertion. So apparently, it was checked last time.  The doctor went back to the still frames of the ultrasound and, even knowing that the cord insertion was absolutely not normal, he couldn't detect it in the still images. It looked normal to him.  He said it could have been the angle, but knowing my history, they would have more frequent ultrasounds to very carefully check the cord insertion in the future.

Gabriela seems to be doing much better. Just last week at Park Day, she and her friend were on a swing together. I was pushing Easton nearby so I heard her conversation. She asked her friend, "You know how I have a sister who died?" and when her friend asked what happened, G calmly and matter of factly explained that her cord got pinched and that was how Simone got all her food and oxygen, through that blood and when she couldn't get that into her body anymore, her heart stopped beating.  She told her friend that Simone was in ashes on our mantel.  It is so relieving, yet incredibly heartbreaking to see Gabriela work this all out. 

Every picture Gabriela draws of our family includes Simone. Her latest creation is my favorite. Simone is in a front baby carrier smiling, her legs are sticking out and she's holding a rattle in one hand, and a bottle in the other. Our whole family is holding hands and there are hearts everywhere.